Saturday was quite a day for carousing, probably the year’s peak, at least for Amsterdam, for while the yearly Gay Pride Canal Parade which I treated in my previous post was proceeding, something called Dance Valley was going on as well – also yearly, consisting of tens of thousands congregating in an area of farmland called Spaarnewoude, just west of Amsterdam, to spend the day gyrating to electronic music coming out of huge speakers.

“Nothing really wrong with that,” you might say – and some of you might even add “. . . especially if that diverted some impressionable youth from otherwise spending their Saturday watching the homosexuals do their thing on Amsterdam’s canals!” True enough, were it not for one particular “impressionable youth” so diverted: our very own Prime Minister, Mark Rutte! The Algemeen Dagblad has the story: Mark Rutte dances along at Dance Valley, complete with pictures and even a brief video of the PM swaying along with the crowd. (I would embed it here, but it’s not all that interesting.) He’s the dude with the shades and the open-necked white shirt, who apparently likes to pose with chicks (with shades). Well, he is only 44, but he heads the VVD, the right-wing businessman’s party, so you’d think he would at least wear a tie!

For the sake of any of you who might gain satisfaction anew from the fact, let me repeat here my observation from that earlier post that the Canal Parade (and therefore Dance Valley, only about 15km to the west) had to deal with repeated interruptions of heavy rains and thunder/lightning. Also, from the AD article, Rutte has attended Dance Valley before, as recently as 2008, when he lost his telephone and so had his friends treated to rude SMS messages from same. But he wasn’t Netherlands head-of-government then.

                          

The immediate impetus to his post is a recent ruling in the Netherlands, to the effect that that is in fact just no big deal, even if the wireless network you’re using happens to be secured, so that you have succeeded in breaking that security to use it! A controversial point-of-view, to be sure, which has also set off a mini-firestorm of discussion over on Slashdot.

Many of the legal issues here are somewhat subtle, meaning that reliance on machine-translation of the original Dutch report on the judge’s ruling is likely to be misleading. But that is where EuroSavant can step in; what follows is my own human-translated version of that piece, as a contribution to the discussion.

Judge: It’s OK to Hack the Neighbors’ WiFi Network

Published: Monday, 14 March 2011
Author: Loek Essers

The Court in The Hague establishes that it is not punishable to hitchhike on the wifi-network of others, even if that network is secured. There’s no question of breach of cyberpeace.

That arises from an appeals-court ruling from the Hague Court. It has to do with a case in which a student posted on-line an announcement of a shooting episode at the Maerlant School in The Hague. The announcement was placed on-line by means of someone else’s network. The student did end up being punished for placing such a threat on-line with a sentence of 120 hours of community service. But there is no issue of breach of cyperpeace by using someone else’s Internet connection.

The person in question did manage to acquire access to someone else’s router, but could thereby only make use of another’s Internet connection. In this approach there was no breaking into the computer of the network’s owner. According to the judge, the interests of the network’s owner were therefore not harmed in any legal sense. But the court did maintain: “This behavior may very well be socially unacceptable insofar as third parties ‘hitchhike’ for free on an Internet connection ordinarily paid for by the authorized user, who thereby as a rule loses bandwidth, but it is not relevant in any criminal sense.”

But it is unlawful
The judge thus ruled that hitchhiking on someone else’s Internet connection is not punishable. In the ruling he explicitly speaks repeatedly of an “Internet connection in any case not secured.” Neither is breaking into the neighbor’s router in order to make use of his Internet connection punishable, according to the court.

That doesn’t mean that it’s a free-for-all. “From the standpoint of civil law, it is simply unlawful,” says criminal lawyer Mathieu van Linde of the firm Blokzijl Advocaten.” You would be able to press charges against someone and say: I suffered damages because my bandwidth was reduced. . . . Then you have to demonstrate exactly what that damage is. But from a criminal point of view, someone like that, according to the Hague Court, is in any case untouchable.”

No breach of cyberpeace
Van Linde finds the case particularly interesting because it also explicitly has to do with secured networks. According to him, concerning unsecured networks you could still say that no sort of security was broken through. “But even if it’s a case of a non-secured network, it’s the same – as long as it’s a matter of making use of an Internet connection via the router – not punishable,” the lawyer explains.

According to the Court it is only punishable at the moment that someone, besides using the Internet connection, also starts snooping around into that person’s computer. Then there can arise “intrusion into automated works,” as it is described in Dutch law. There is only breach of cyberpeace if there is such intrusion into “automated works.”

Router no computer
Automated works are defined according to Van Linde as follows: “There must be, if you want to talk about such automated works, a situation whereby the device is designed for cumulative functions: storage, processing and data-transfer.” Only if those three conditions are fulfilled can there be talk of breach of cyberpeace.

With a router that is not the case. A piece of equipment that only functions to transfer data and/or store them falls outside that legal description. “And so they say that a router is therefore nothing more than a switching-device or connection-point for a network,” says Van Linde. For a router, according to the Court, it’s much more a matter of a password or user-code and providing a means to send data. And for that reason the router does not fall under the term automated works, because the router doesn’t store any data but only only sends them.

Hacking the neighbor’s router in order to then make use of the secured Internet connection is therefore allowed, Van Linde confirms. He notes that the ruling is based upon certain legal history. The Court cites two articles, of which one comes from 1990 and one from 1998. According to Van Linde those are “probably” a bit out-of-date. But: “As long as you don’t go snooping around the neighbor’s storage, then it is not punishable.”

A Dutch judge had already ruled in 2008 that secretly hitchhiking on the neighbor’s Internet is not theft. Data and bandwidth are not goods and can thus not be stolen, according to the ruling. Prior to this pronouncement someone had once been arrested for making use of another’s WiFi-network from an auto. Also after this pronouncement people have been arrested for the same reason.

                          

The coots had already been busy for weeks with the defense of their nest. Every presumed enemy was driven away with elan by a fierce flapping of wings. Finally the family swam around, but with seven chicks.

And so on, continuing to the depiction of an idyllic family meal. But it’s hardly all sweetness and light. There’s mention of parent coots even pecking their young to death if they find them too much trouble, but in this case things don’t come to that. Instead, Dijksterhuis notes that none of the seven chicks are to be seen after only five days, victims of one predator or another. Especially suspicious as culprits are the sea gulls (specifically, black-backed gulls), which have even been known to hunt young coot chicks in pairs: the first swoops over, prompting the chick to dive in panic, but then the second is there to snatch it when it resurfaces.

Dijksterhuis goes on to note that he sees many more such gulls than he can recall in the past. Is it because of the prey of this sort that they can find inland, or something else? Anyway, note well that this piece – labeled natuurdagboek or “nature diary,” so that it seems to be part of a series – appeared the very same day as nationalwide elections were happening here in the Netherlands. The “printing” capacity of the Internet is truly without limit.

                          

Even here, such a policy suggestion is highly controversial and, in view of the high-profile names attached to it, it immediately provoked comment within the Dutch press – from within the NRC itself, of course, but also in the form of a press-agency treatment available in other newspapers, among which Trouw (Bolkestein wants to legalize all drugs).

Why are we reading about this now? Well, I’ll likely get criticism for sounding like a broken record, but once more: it’s because of the national election we’ll have here in the Netherlands on June 9. Such a significant political event naturally concentrates minds on coming up with solutions to the nation’s problems, which currently include an alleged imperative to find around €30 billion of savings from the national budget. And what do you know: in that NRC opinion piece the co-signatories assert that legalizing drugs completely will lead to cost savings of €31.5 billion. The law-enforcement outlays involved alone (about one-half of that savings amount, they claim) cost each Dutch citizen €924 per year. And naturally, once all drugs can be made and sold, they can all be taxed as well.

Of course, the Netherlands is famous/notorious for its already-existing “soft drugs” policy that makes it easy for people 18 years and up to go to a “coffee shop” and smoke cannabis. It’s this rather unique policy, practiced over some thirty years, that the co-signatories point to for their evidence that drugs legalization won’t just make everyone go crazy – Dutch cannabis use is in fact lower than in most other countries, including the immediate European neighbors where people either have to procure it through illegal means or come pay a visit to our fair land. Still, even that “soft drugs” policy needs reform in the eyes of these politicians, because it effectively sets up such impossible conditions for the coffee shops to be able to get their supplies that virtually every one of them is technically in violation of the law and so is subject to the authorities’ whim as to whether it can even stay in business.

I myself live here, right at “ground zero” for any such proposed drugs legalization. Sorry to say, a military background makes your EuroSavant quite disinclined to take any personal advantage of even the current “soft drugs” policy, much less any full legalization. How would I like to live in a guinea-pig land, so to speak, where such full legalization has taken effect? The politicians’ editorial does address the potential “demand-side” effects, not only pointing comfortingly to that 30 years’ experience with “soft drugs” but also asserting that mind-altering drugs will at least be safer and better-labeled when legal (and that the outright prohibition on any sales to minors would be retained). But I just don’t know.

                          

There was this Belgian guy, see, living in the Netherlands, just above the Belgian border in Roosendaal, and he found that he had lost his Dutch residence permit and so needed visit the local police station to get a new one. Bad move: he was, after all, wanted for questioning in connection with his alleged assault with a knife on his then-girlfriend back in August, 2008, something the police officer there discovered rather easily while looking up his records.

So the Rosendaal police got to chalk up an easy win, with a wanted suspect falling right into their lap, right? Not exactly: he was able rather swiftly to escape “via the garden” – aren’t police-gardens against regulations? – so that an arrest order for him was issued yet again. Easy come, easy go.

                          

The “hook” to Van der Laan’s speech, as it were, was the fact that it has now been 65 years since the end of the war – that’s the standard retirement age, at least within Europe, so why don’t we finally put WWII out to retirement as well? With this, the ex-politician was giving voice to what many in Europe surely have always thought in secret about the War (especially those too young to have lived through it): for how long will we have to keep paying respect, keep letting it influence our lives? It’s a very pertinent question, especially when applied to Germany and the issue of when, if ever, the guilt for what that nation perpetrated will finally be washed away and made irrelevant through the eroding effect of all the passing years.

But forget that: Van der Laan is a Dutch ex-politician, not German, and he was speaking at a ceremony held in one of the two Dutch capitals. So his argument about putting WWII “out to pension” is along Dutch lines, and so not about guilt but just about the fact that it still comes up as a subject so much in public discussions. His implication is that it’s just not very relevant anymore for most public dialogue, maybe even harmful (e.g. calling people “Nazis”); his implication might even be that he agrees with the roughly 1-in-5 of the Dutch who believe that Liberation/Remembrance Days should be celebrated once every five years, not every year.

Interestingly, there was another explicit angle to Van der Laan’s speech which even points to some degree in a contradictory way, for he called at the same time for more proper research to be done on the War. OK: So the common, uninformed people should talk about the War less, while researchers should look into it more. In fact, one reason he offered for upping that research effort was to revise any idea that Dutch behavior under occupation could be characterized as a slappe houding, i.e. spineless. Sure, the Dutch were the European champions – other than Germany itself – in ensuring that their Jews were delivered to the Nazi gas chambers. (About 75% of Dutch Jews met this fate; that particular number, however, is nowhere to be seen in the AD article nor, one supposes, in Van der Laan’s speech itself.) But they had excuses: it was more difficult for Dutch Jews to make their way to lands where they would be safe; the Netherlands simply had more policemen employed than, for example, Belgium, and these participated in the German Jew round-ups while those in Belgium did not.

Are you confused here as I am? That first excuse (harder to get elsewhere to safety) sounds somewhat reasonable (but applies just as much to Belgium), but the second one about the policemen does not. Anyway, “[o]ur parents and grandparents were just as sturdy/robust [NL: flink] as those in other lands,” is Van der Laan’s conclusion. Indeed, his own parents were apparently active in the Dutch Resistance; but otherwise I do think he is trying to put an artificial gloss on the whole WWII situation. Again, the number is 75%, Mr. Van der Laan. Still, you’re probably right when it comes to your two non-polemical proposals: it is likely time to push WWII back further into history when it comes to public observance, but let’s do have some more historical investigation as well. I wager that that 75% figure will still stand up to that pretty well.

                          

Notice something? That tragedy (almost) happened, not in Baghdad or some exotic place like that, but in one of the most American of American places. And don’t forget Major Hasan and his homicidal rage at another bastion of the red-white-and-blue, Fort Hood, TX. What ever happened to President George W. Bush’s 2003 promise: “We are fighting that enemy [i.e. terrorists] in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities”? I guess American soldiers are not fighting so much anymore in Iraq, at least; could that be the reason?

Get real. The potential for “home-grown” terrorists operating on US soil since the 9/11 attacks – and even before – should have been evident at least from the time that the “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, found his way into the US criminal justice system. Nonetheless, as discussed in this interesting article by Janny Groen from De Volkskrant, for a long while the American authorities proceeded as if the terrorist threat was indeed something located only outside the country, to be fought with military methods.

Now they’re starting to know better and devote more attention to addressing that “home-grown” terrorism, and the article’s main message is how they seem to be desirous to learn more about the Dutch approach, namely a hyper-local methodology relying upon police work but also that of social workers and other community personnel, all of whom know a neighborhood and its key Muslim authority figures well. How do we know they’re interested in what the Dutch have to say here? Well, how about from the time the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, took off recently from a very busy week (featuring a gigantic oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico) to meet with visiting Dutch Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs, Ernst Hirsch Ballin? Oh, and as another example the New York City police have already been in contact – well before the Times Square car-bomb, then – with the Dutch National Coordinator for Combating Terrorism (Dutch initials “NCTb”) about arranging for some trainng programs.

Yes, American police and justice officials seem to have woken up (finallly) to the need to address terrorism of the “home-grown” variety, and so are increasingly interested in learning about “best practice” from other countries, not only Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but also other places that are more culturally-similar yet which have also succeeded in keeping the lid on internal terrorist threats: the Netherlands, but also the UK and Denmark.

Then again, Groen asks: Has the Netherlands really “succeeded”? Relative to what? Her article cites the viewpoints of plenty of terrorism academics, some of whom note the growth of a substantial “anti-radicalisation industry” of security firms, counselors, etc. in many of these countries but who doubt that that necessarily means that they are “succeeding” against terrorism. Anyway, even if the US would want to adopt Dutch methods, there is a big obstacle in the way: there is no equivalent in the Netherlands to the FBI, which in the US tends to be antagonistic towards local police but also to take over terrorist-incident investigations, despite its personnel’s lack of local knowledge. The Americans will have to do something about this jurisdictional dispute first.

                          

Even if you don’t read Dutch, that article might be worth a click anyway due to the attractive, if “canned” (i.e. from one of those photo agencies, in this case Colourbox), photo of roses at the top. ‘Cause if there’s one thing everyone associates with Holland, it’s flowers, and that business is heavily dependent on air transport for product-delivery that usually has to happen within a span of a few days, at most. What may come as a surprise is that much of that flower product-delivery to buyers is within the Netherlands – or within the immediate vicinity in Northwest Europe – and sourced with flowers usually flown in from more exotic locales like Kenya and Ecuador. Those are of course now cut-off, and that is the main cause for the steep price-rises now seen here for flowers, whether for foreign ones that got here anyway (or were here before the Eyjafjallajökull volcano blew) or the domestically-grown variety. Still, never fear (if you’ve got the money to pay): “There are sufficient Dutch flowers to supply the European market,” declares Herman de Boon, who is the Dutch answer to Mr. Bean even as he serves at the same time as Chairman of the Dutch Association of Flower Wholesalers.

The situation is similar when it comes to other exotic things that have to be flown in: fruits & vegetables, for instance. There’s still enough in stock, just don’t expect to be able to take your Spring sweetheart to a restaurant to enjoy things like Peruvian asparagus or Egyptian green beans for a while. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical and medical sectors have also felt the flight-ban’s effects; for example, apparently some radiation-based medicines for fighting cancer must be used within 24 hours or they go to waste.

Here’s an informative English-language run-down from Global Post on how the Dutch flower industry has been dealing with a difficult week – including some good news at least for those hospitals, mentioned at the very end.

                          

How about “video games” instead? The Dutch newspaper Trouw has a piece up now about that. (Game industry must warn against addiction; it’s credited to the Novum news agency, based in Amsterdam, of which I had never heard before.) Its starting-point is a recent report from the Rotterdam-based research bureau IVO, which must be an interesting place to work since it indeed specializes in “lifestyle” and addiction issues. (Check out its English page here, and you can download their video game report here, although it’s in Dutch and they’ll first ask you to enter some information about yourself.) IVO claims that the gaming industry is shirking its public responsibility by doing nothing to counteract video game addiction. In the meantime, the estimated number of such addicts in the Netherlands has reached between 30,000 and 80,000 (out of a population of 16 million).

Not only is that a conclusion that these companies don’t enjoy having made public, but IVO conducted the report in the first place on a commission from the Dutch Ministry of Health. Reaction has been swift from the NVPI, the Dutch industry association for “the entertainment industry.” Yes we do act against addiction, a spokesman claimed: we put recommended-age indications on the boxes of all such games, together with additional warnings if they involve such nasty things as sex, drugs, or violence. What else can you do?

That’s a valid point: what else? A further action discussed here is putting on some sort of “Watch out! This game can be addictive!” warning-label on as well. But that won’t work because 1) It’s lame; 2) If it has any effect, it will merely attract more buyers; and 3) For most players by far, the game will turn out not to be addicting.

                          

But Dutch culture also stems from a rather Calvinist historical background (think “Thou Shalt Not!”), which cannot but give rise to various paradoxes – if you’d rather not call them “hypocrisies” – such as that, while it’s legal to buy hash and marijuana in small amounts, it’s strictly-speaking illegal to supply the stuff in any commercially-meaningful amounts. And the public authorities take a particularly dim view of marijuana “farms” or “plantations.”

Combine all that with Dutch technical ingenuity, and what you can come up with as a result is what (fittingly) the Dutch religious newspaper Nederlands Dagblad is now reporting: Unmanned helicopter tracks down marijuana-cultivation. You can get a good look at what is being discussed here by clicking through on that link and looking at the accompanying photo. (Dutch technical ingenuity, alas, also meant that that picture was protected by the embedding-software so that I was not able to “borrow” it to post it here directly.) It’s a smallish, less than a meter-long, remote-control helicopter, termed by the police that use it a “Cannachopper.” It’s truly a chopper with a difference, namely its “cannasniffer,” an odor-detector that can identify that unique fragrance emitted by smokable weed (even if still-unharvested). It also has an infra-red camera, i.e. heat detector, since that is usually the first give-away that some unconventional agriculture is taking place: cultivating marijuana requires substantial heat. Once alerted by signs of that, the aircraft can usually swoop closer to take a sniff with the “cannasniffer” and so come to a definitive verdict about what is going on.

So far there is only one “Cannachopper” in existence, because the program is still in its experimental stage. But the results from early field-trials, performed out in the somewhat out-of-the-way area of Dutch countryside called the Achterhoek, have been encouraging: a weed plantation in the neighborhood of the town of Doetinchem (warning: this name can really only be pronounced correctly if you are truly Dutch!) was discovered and five people were arrested. So it does seem likely that many more “Cannachoppers” will soon be flying around in the Netherlands, although the police spokesman did also speak of the possible need for it “to be further modified.” What does he have in mind? Making it resemble more its big brother, the AH-64 Apache, with a mini-chain gun and Hellfire missiles for self-defense? In his statement that spokesman also advocated deploying the “Cannachopper” in order to get “more blue on the street,” i.e. to free up police manpower for other things. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to add more blood-red to the street as well.